The present invention relates to a user operation assisting technique for assisting a user in operating an information processing device such as a computer, and more particularly to a technique suitable for assisting a user in preparing an email.
In recent years, text-based telecommunications systems such as email and chat have been commonly used. Particularly, exchanging emails using a personal computer or a PDA has become indispensable in modern business situations and exchanging information between friends.
Email, as opposed to voice-based telecommunications systems such as telephones, is characteristic in that a user can send information to the recipient, or receive and view information therefrom, at any time of the user's convenience. Other advantages include the user not having to take a note of information.
The address book function enhances the convenience of email. A user can easily obtain an email address of a recipient to whom the user is sending an email. A user can also register information of a recipient in the user's address book by referring to the content of a received email. In order to reduce the burden on the user, a technique has been proposed in the prior art (see, for example, Patent Document 1) for automatically extracting from received emails, and registering in the address book, particular text strings representing telephone numbers and email addresses.
As a technique for assisting the user in preparing a body text of an email, there has been proposed in the art a technique in which the user categorizes in advance recipients to which the user sends emails into different groups, so that when the user prepares an email, a list of sentences that are appropriate for the relevant category are presented to the user (see, for example, Patent Document 2).
(Patent Document 1) Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2000-172587
(Patent Document 2) Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2000-148753
However, as for information about human relations with a recipient such as the senior-junior relationship or the friendliness degree with the recipient (human-relations information), the user themselves needs to make decisions and register the information. Since human relations of a user with others change over time, and the user carries the burden of having to update the registered information each time such change occurs.
As for preparing an email, the user themselves needs to compose and manually input sentences. Therefore, the user carries a heavy burden of selecting a locution and decoration information that are appropriate for the recipient. Particularly, with a small-sized terminal such as a portable telephone, having a small display screen and a less convenient text input method, the user carries a heavier burden of inputting a body text.
With the technique described in Patent Document 2, supra, while it may be possible to reduce the user's burden of inputting text when preparing an email, it is still time-consuming to register human relations for each email recipient. Moreover, human relations are usually not so simple that a user can simply register a recipient as a superior or a subordinate, or as a friend or a non-friend, and the relationship differs from one email recipient to another, whereby it is difficult to appropriately register a recipient in a category.
In view of the problems set forth above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a device, a computer program and a method for assisting a user in preparing an email, which are capable of automatically producing human-relations information for each email recipient. It is also an object of the present invention to provide a device, a computer program and a method for assisting a user in preparing an email, which are capable of appropriately assisting a user in preparing an email according to a recipient to whom the email is to be sent.